Jason Mott, FICTION
Jason Mott is the bestselling author of Hell of a Book, which won the 2021 National Book Award in Fiction. Mott has published four novels: The Returned, The Wonder of All Things, The Crossing, and Hell Of A Book, as well as two poetry collections. The Returned, Mott’s debut novel, was adapted for television and aired on the ABC network under the title “Resurrection.” Mott has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Most recently, he was selected as a 2024 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.
Mott can be found online at jasonmottauthor.com
Nickole Brown, POETRY
Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She’s the author of multiple books, including Sister: A Novel-in-Poems, first published in 2007 and reissued in 2018, Fanny Says, which won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015, and The Donkey Elegies: An Essay in Poems. Brown teaches as part of the low-residency MFA Program at the Sewanee School of Letters in Tennessee. Currently, Brown lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she volunteers at several different animal sanctuaries. She’s a proud Fellow of the Black Earth Institute and works full-time as President of the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, a nonprofit organization that aims to nurture a community bent on finding the words that protect and repair our climate-changed world. Hellbender’s first annual poetry festival is set to launch in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in October of 2025.
Brown can be found online at nickolebrown.org.